Part of the Global Plot to Expose Moonbats, conspiracy nuts, and anti-Semites, especially the Jewish anti-Semitic variety.
The leftwing Neo-Nazi web magazine Counterpunch has described Plaut thus: "One of the most pernicious writers is Steven Plaut, a man who could be thought of as Israel's Daniel Pipes."

One of the most extremist of Israeli leftist "professors," and surprisinglysomeone who teaches at Bar-Ilan University (where she is deputy chair-personof MA Studies), has just emerged in the limelight as a result of a broadcastby the Qatar-based Al Jazeera news network. The broadcast purported thatIsraeli Defense Forces (IDF) soldiers who fought in Operation Cast Lead werenow wearing T-Shirts boasting of their killing pregnant women and children.

Orna Sasson-Levy <http://www.biu.ac.il/soc/so/sasson-levy.html> is asociologist who specializes in "Gender Studies," one of the trendy new<http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1568/is_9_34/ai_96644872>pseudo-academic disciplines that radical leftists have gotten universitiesto recognize. "Gender Studies" is yet another study of "oppression" withindemocratic western societies, and never mind about the treatment of women orfemale genital mutilation in the Third World. Sadly, Sasson-Levy does littlemore than project her political agenda into her "field," and that agenda isdecidedly hateful of Israel's soldiers.

Sasson-Levy, it turns out, is a devoted acolyte of the late Marxistsociologist Baruch<http://www.isracampus.org.il/third%20level%20pages/Editorial%20-%20Lee%20Kaplan%20-%20Baruch%20Kimmerling%20-%20illustrates.htm> Kimmerling, who longworked assiduously against the Jewish state and who wrote extensively andnegatively about "the state of the IDF" when he was not inventing a historyof a Palestinian "people." Sasson-Levy builds upon Kimmerling's ideas aboutthe Israeli army as being militarism-gone-amuck in an otherwise uncivilizedsociety that "oppresses" the Palestinian people. Her curriculum vitae<http://www.biu.ac.il/soc/so/sasson-levy.html> shows she studied personallyunder Kimmerling, and this apple did not fall far from the tree. Sasson-Levybuilt her entire career upon denouncing the "gender practices of Israeliwomen soldiers in 'masculine roles'" as well as "hegemonic masculinity andIsraeli militarism." That is what passes for neutral academic research thesedays in Gender Studies.

Sasson-Levy explains in one of her papers<http://jmm.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/10/3/296> that she studies theIDF by conducting " in-depth interviews with Israeli combat soldiers," inwhich she claims that "the warrior's bodily and emotional practices areconstituted through two opposing discursive regimes: self-control andthrill. The nexus of these two themes promotes an individualizedinterpretation frame of militarized practices, which blurs the boundariesbetween choice and coercion, presents mandatory military service as afulfilling self-actualization, and enables soldiers to ignore the politicaland moral meanings of their actions." We are not making this up! In otherwords, she dabbles in "scholarly analysis through doubletalk."

In simple English, soldiers in the IDF are not serving to protect theirfamilies from Arab irredentists or jihadis who want to murder or terrorizethem, nor are they protecting the Jewish people from the endless pogromsconducted against them. Instead, they are serving as blind ignorantautomatons with no moral or political sense, too stupid to understand theworld as Sasson-Levy and the anti-Zionists see it. Military conscriptiondoes not fit her sense of "democracy" either. Never mind that it results ina people's army that can protect the country so middle-aged intellectualslike herself can denounce it from the comfort of Bar-Ilan University. Nevermind that the actual elite combat units that do most of the fighting aregenerally composed of volunteers who asked for combat duty.

Of course, today any good "Gender Studies" professor worth her salt wouldalso have to show oppression of women in the military. Sasson-Levydetermines that Israeli women who serve as trainers in the IDF somehowundergo a "gender transformation" by lowering their voices and actuallybehaving there like men, instead of serving in traditional feminine roles(how sexist of this Gender Studies professor to think such roles exist!).Frankly, we have seen many a female army officer who looks better in a skirtthan Sasson-Levy! She arrives at these "scholarly theories" afterinterviewing a little more than 50 women in the IDF, an army in which about20% of combat units have women soldiers in them. But, wait! She alsoproduces another <http://gas.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/21/4/481>paper in which she explains how women serving as secretaries in the IDF aresubject to male chauvinists forcing them into the "matrimonial principle ofthe office wife," which makes them "status symbols" (i.e. underpaid sexobjects).

The truth is that as recently as last month the IDF<http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/Israel%20beyond%20politics/Integration_women_in_IDF-March_2009.htm> once again took steps to integrate further the serviceand open up more careers for women. What a surprise to learn fromSasson-Levy that female drill sergeants are coerced into shouting orders thesame as their male counterparts, instead of curtsying, asking their recruitsto open doors for them, or showing them traditional "feminine" deference.And frankly, we suspect that if a male recruit were to hold the door openfor a female DI or gallantly throw his coat over a puddle for her to walkacross, Sasson-Levy would have a tantrum. Women soldiers performing"traditional feminine" roles in the IDF, such as secretaries, are alsoenough to get Sasson-Levy's petticoat twisted in rage. In short, whateverthe IDF does, and to whomever it does things, it must always be consideredoppressive and evil.

Al Jazeera routinely refers to suicide bombers and terrorists who murderIsraelis as "martyrs," and was accused of using its correspondents insideIsrael for espionage, phoning in rockets positions to the Hizballah duringthe 2006 summer war. In addition, Al Jazeera gives<http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/02/magazine/02ARAB.html?pagewanted=print&%23038;position=> free press time to bin Laden and Al Qaeda. Despite this,their news crews are allowed into Israel, where they churn out propagandaagainst Israel. In part, they are assisted in this by none other than ourOrna Sasson-Levy.

Her latest "scoop" begins with what was a possibly tasteless choice intee-shirts by some young Israeli soldiers. One shirt showed a pregnant womanin gun sights. It was ordered from a commercial tee-shirt print shop. Sincethen, soldier "Tee Shirt Insensitivity" has become the new banner of theanti-Zionist Israeli Far Left!

So amidst the attempt by the Palestinians to obliterate southern Israel in arocket blitz, triggering Operation Cast Lead to stop the Qassams falling onSderot and Ashkelon, Sasson-Levy and the other "leftists against tee-shirts"decided to paint the IDF as a bunch of bloodthirsty warmongers andcutthroats. The Al Jazeera report about the "tee shirt atrocity" wasproduced in English so that it has the look of a CNN report. Al Jazeeraexpressed no shock or remorse when the Arabs were firing thousands ofQassams at children in Sderot and Ashkelon. But a tasteless cartoon ontee-shirts trumps that as a human rights abuse! Or at least it does soaccording to Orna Sasson-Levy.

Meanwhile, The Committee For Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America(CAMERA) reports that Danny Zamir, a leftist opposed to Israel fighting theHamas in self-defense, submitted a "report" to head of the IDF, GabiAshkenazi, based on some hearsay about Israeli soldiers supposedly shootinginnocent women and children during Operation Cast Lead. The subsequentinvestigation proved the accusations false, but, of course, the intended<http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/130616> media damage wasalready done. Israel's soldiers were smeared. Al Jazeera's cynical use ofOrna Sasson-Levy to further smear the IDF over Shirtgate was similar.

So a handful of IDF soldiers (out of an army of 500,000) were allegedlypurchasing with their own money and wearing objectionable tee-shirts, as ajoke. Shirts that supposedly glorified the killing of women and children!Gosh, where on earth do teenagers ever don tasteless tee-shirts!?? OneT-shirt had a picture of a pregnant woman in the sight of rifle with thecaption, "One shot, Two Kills." Another tee-shirt had an image of a child inthe gun sight with a comment about how inconvenient it is to kill such asmall target. We are not amused. But we have seen far worse slogans on teeshirts on the campus of Berkeley and in San Francisco. Frankly, we find thetee-shirts less disturbing than Arab chants of "In fire and blood we willredeem thee Oh Palestine."

Gabi Ashkenazi, Chief of Staff of the IDF, rightfully describing the shirtsas "tasteless." He added that the shirts had been made up by a few yahoos,immature young people with no sense of decorum. But for Sasson-Levy theshirts were a gold mine. She exploited the prank to smear Israel and the IDFas a whole, and on Al-Jazeera no less!

Al Jazeera produced a video about the T-shirts that appeared on anti-Israelweb sites and blogs all over the planet, next to headline banners such as"UN Accuses Israel of War Crimes" and "Guardian Uncovers Evidence of IsraeliWar Crimes in Gaza, Parts 1, 2, 3." Al Jazeera of course does not runstories about Palestinians using<http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,553724,00.html> MickeyMouse and other childish images on children's TV shows to mass murder ofJews.

Interviewed by the Al Jazeera reporter, Sasson-Levy states, "The tee-shirtsare an example of culture, they're symbolic, even if they're not really usedby the Israeli force, right? They're saying. 'This is our culture, we'reproud of it,' and by wearing the T-shirt again and again, you again andagain make public this statement: We are proud of killing Palestinian babiesor Palestinian pregnant women..." Sasson-Levy then adds, "The tee-shirtsrepresent an increasing trend in Israeli culture that 'dehumanizes'Palestinians as can be shown on the shirts." You can watch the video here<http://palestinevideo.blogspot.com/search?q=Ayman+Mohyeldin+%2B+Israeli+T-shirts> . We have yet to hear of anyone ever being blown up by a tee shirt.[In light of her jihad against the tee-shirts, we kind of prefer thatultra-feminist haters of Israel should go back to burning bras.]

Sasson-Levy pretends to be an academic expert on women's oppression at thehands of a patriarchal male-dominated society, a slogan she intersperses inher "analyses" against the IDF as if it were a punctuation mark. She arguesthat tee-shirts are an indication of the acceptance of "force" in Israelisociety. "It's frightening for everyone," she says in the Al-Jazeera video,"and it's frightening for women in Israeli society and that's also theorientation the last elections shows, that the state is going more to theright wing..."

It is a shame that the Arabs do not fire nasty T-shirts into Sderot fromGaza instead of Qassams...

Actually our scholar Sasson-Levy did no research or interviews at all withany soldiers on the matter, not even those who allegedly wore thetee-shirts. She has no way of knowing whether they hate Arabs or just have ateenager sense of "humor." She also did no research to show that women inIsrael are any more frightened by the patriarchal menfolk of the IDF than byQassam rockets. She states for Al Jazeera's camera that the Israelielectorate voted for the new conservative government because the country istrending toward violence. It does not occur to her that voters consideredthe previous Leftist government to have failed to protect the public fromArab missile attacks.

And Israeli taxpayers are picking up the bill for such "scholarship."

The Al Jazeera reporter who interviewed her claims to have visited thetee-shirt shop where the shirts were supposedly printed, but claims he wasordered out by police. Yeah, sure. I suppose one should also not rule outthe possibility that they were actually ordered in the first place byIsrael's leftist anti-war and pro-Arab groups as a provocation and ruse. Wealso do not know if any of the soldiers wearing the tee-shirt had beenstationed in Gaza or took place in combat there

The leftist daily <http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1072466.html>Haaretz also ran a "scoop" about Shirtgate, in which it stated thatemployees responsible for producing the shirts at the printer were in factArabs. Could they have created the shirts as a provocation? Or just as agimmick to make money? These possibilities do not interest social scientistSasson-Levy, who pontificates with authority that such shirts represent adangerous trend in Israeli society and the IDF as a whole! On the pro-terrorAl <http://www.aim.org/aim-column/did-al-jazeera-inspire-the-terrorists/>Jazeera!

Liberals try to disguise the utter wussification of our interrogationtechniques by constantly prattling on about "the banality of evil."

Um, no. In this case, it's actually the banality of the banal.

Start with the fact that the average Gitmo detainee has gained 20 pounds incaptivity. There's even a medical term for it now: "the Gitmo gut." Someprisoners have been heard whispering, "If you think Allah is great, youshould try these dinner rolls."

In terms of "torture," there was "the attention grasp," which you have seenin every department store you have ever been where a mother was trying toget her misbehaving child's attention. If "the attention grasp" doesn'twork, the interrogators issue a stern warning: "Don't make me pull this carover."

Farther up the parade of horribles was "walling," which I will not describeexcept to say Elliot Spitzer paid extra for it.

And for the most hardened terrorists, CIA interrogators had "thecaterpillar." Evidently, the terrorists have gotten so fat on the food atGuantanamo, now they can't even outrun a caterpillar.

Contrary to MSNBC hosts who are afraid of bugs, water and their own shadows,waterboarding was most definitely not a "war crime" for which the Japanesewere prosecuted after World War II -- no matter how many times Mrs. JonathanTurley, professor of cooking at George Washington University, says so.

All MSNBC hosts and guests were apparently reading "Little Women" ratherthan military books as children and therefore can be easily fooled aboutJapanese war crimes. (MSNBC: The Official Drama Queen Network of the 2012Olympics.)

Given what the Japanese did to prisoners, waterboarding would be a rewardfor good behavior.

It might be: waterboarding PLUS amputating the prisoner's healthy arm, orwaterboarding PLUS killing the prisoner. But waterboarding on the order ofwhat we did at Guantanamo would be a reward in a Japanese POW camp.

To claim that the Japanese -- architects of the Bataan Death March -- wereprosecuted for "waterboarding" would be like saying Ted Bundy was executedfor engaging in sexual harassment.

What the Japanese did to their POWs made even the Nazis blanch. The Japaneseroutinely beheaded and bayoneted prisoners; forced prisoners to dig theirown graves and then buried them alive; amputated prisoners' healthy arms andlegs, one by one, for sport; force-fed prisoners dry rice and then filledtheir stomachs with water until their bowels exploded; and injected themwith chemical weapons in order to observe, time and record their deaththroes before dumping them in mass graves.

While only 4 percent of British and American troops captured by German orItalian forces died in captivity, 27 percent of British and American POWscaptured by the Japanese died in captivity. Japanese war crimes were soatrocious that even rape was treated as only a secondary war crime in theTokyo trial, similar to what happens during an R. Kelly trial.

The Japanese "water cure" was to "waterboarding" as practiced at Guantanamowhat rape at knifepoint is to calling your secretary "honey."

The Japanese version of "waterboarding" was to fill the prisoner's stomachwith water until his stomach was distended -- and then pound on his stomach,causing the prisoner to vomit.

Or they would jam a stick into the prisoner's nose so he could breathe onlythrough his mouth and then pour water in his mouth so he would choke todeath.

Or they would "waterboard" the prisoner with saltwater, which would killhim.

Finding out who started the tall tale about "waterboarding" being treated asa war crime after World War II would take the talents of a forensichistorian, someone like Christina Hoff Sommers.

After years of hearing the feminist "fact" that emergency room admissionsfor women beaten by their husbands soared by 40 percent on Super BowlSundays, Sommers traced it back to an unsubstantiated rumination eruptingfrom a feminist rap session.

But the lunatic claim was passed around with increasing credibility until itended up being cited as hard fact in The New York Times, The Boston Globeand on "Good Morning America."

One of the earliest entries in the "waterboarding as war crimes" myth mustbe this October 2006 article in The Washington Post, citing a case raised bySen. Teddy Kennedy -- and heaven knows Kennedy understands the horrors of anear-drowning:

"Twenty-one years earlier, in 1947, the United States charged a Japaneseofficer, Yukio Asano, with war crimes for carrying out another form ofwaterboarding on a U.S. civilian. The subject was strapped on a stretcherthat was tilted so that his feet were in the air and head near the floor,and small amounts of water were poured over his face, leaving him gaspingfor air until he agreed to talk."

Even if that description of what Asano did were true -- and it isn't -- theonly relevant word in the entire paragraph is "civilian."

Any mistreatment of a civilian is a war crime. So every other part of thatparagraph is utterly irrelevant to the treatment of prisoners of war, muchless non-uniformed enemy combatants at Guantanamo, who could have been shoton sight under the laws of war.

What Americans need to understand is that under liberals' own "laws of war,"they will invent apocryphal incidents from history in order to give aid andcomfort to America's enemies and to undermine those who kept us safe for thepast eight years.

This exchange reminds me of the days when Israeli theaters (or cinemas)would get movies from the US and Europe months or even years after they hadbeen playing over there. Or, to use a totally different metaphor, the splitsin the kibbutz movement. In this case, the ideological wars of Israeliacademics continue decades after they have stopped being relevant.

So for those of you on this list who missed the past 20 years, here is thebottom line: Ideology is a one-dimensional filter that diverts attentionaway from the real world. In trying to force complex situations to fitsimplistic ideologies, adherents to political religions and false gods onboth fringes Left and Right have more in common than they care to admit.Fascism and Communism sought to box human behavior into one-dimensionalmodels, and both failed, but only after their impassioned adherents didconsiderable damage. And ideologues, like other fanatics, tend to beintolerant of outsiders and skeptics, perhaps explaining why antisemitism isfound at both ends of the spectrum.

What surprises and depresses me is that so many Israeli academics seem totake such rhetoric seriously, when the feuds between the so-called Left andRight are entirely anachronistic. Does anyone really think that universityprofessors such as Bar Tal, David Newman, etc., journalists writing forHaaretz, -- or powerful NGO officials from IDI, B'tslem, ACRI, Adallah,Gisha, and dozens of other groups with very large budgets and direct accessto the media -- are an endangered species whose survival requiressuppression of critical analyses? Is the right to criticize restricted tothis elite, while its members have divine immunity from being criticizedwhen they fail to live up to the universal moral principles that theyexploit?

Furthermore, I find ideological claims of "attempts to restrict free speech"and the absurd use of the term "McCarthyism", intellectually dishonest andimmoral. By screaming "McCarthyism" whenever critical analyses of theirclaims or activities are published, these critics can themselves be accusedof trying to suppress and discredit free speech. The same would be true offringe Right groups labeling criticism and public debate from the Left as"Finkelsteinism".

So, my suggestion to Profs. Bar Tal and Newman, and others is to use yourconsiderable energies for useful academic research, and drop the fruitlessideological warfare. If you criticize, you should expect to be criticized --get over it.